Brushstroke
by JustAnotherAuthorDurping
Summary: AU Post AWE Elizabeth is having a hard time with her hair - can Jack convince her to allow him to help? Sparrabeth Flirting mostly. Read and Review?


A/N: A very happy fifteenth birthday to the loveliest girl in the entire world, **Zay** (**Zayz**)! I wish you the best of birthdays and I hope you enjoy this fic! It's really just a lot of harmless flirting... Bwahaha… Captain Jack Sparrow; The Demon Barber of the _Black_ _Pearl_.

A big thanks and some love to **Anna**,(**Jack.Sparrow.1245**) who beta'd this! Thanks dear!

**Fic Note:** Takes place post AWE; Elizabeth is sailing with Jack, for some odd reason.

**Disclaimer: Me? Fortunately for the Willabethers I don't own Pirates, or AWE would have been a _whole_ 'nother story…**

**Brushstroke:**

Hair.

It comes in thousands of different shades, hues, and textures from the straight, black locks of the Spanish to the curly, ginger tresses of the Irish. It makes a bold statement of ones personality. While one man may have his hair long, pulled back into a low ponytail, resembling that of a calm and collected gentlemen, another may choose to leave it cropped short, a messy pile atop of his head that speaks for his adventurous behavior, or perhaps his lack of hygiene.

Both men and woman admire one another for their locks, though some begin to grow jealous of another person's head of hair. One woman that is a prime example of this, a woman that makes other female creatures across the world envious over her golden tresses that appear to have literally been kissed by the sun, is none other then Elizabeth Turner.

Despite the hard labor she has been providing on the infamous, enigmatic vessel the Black Pearl, the saucy female pirate's locks still drives men crazy with desire, particularly when she wears it down past her shoulders, allowing her mane to blow fiercely in the wind. It was once cocoa brown, but because of the many months she'd spent out at sea it has naturally begun to bleach, getting lighter every day, something she has taken a favor to.

Elizabeth had always felt prideful of her hair when she had been a young girl living in Port Royal – it had always curled perfectly, and was a maids dream to handle. Unlike most girls, she does not have a stubborn side, a side that refuses to take the shape of what the stylist wants. No, her hair is just naturally tame, forming the curliest of curls, or the straightest of locks. However, that was before she had been taken aboard the Black Pearl as a crew member.

Standing above a rope she has just tied down, Elizabeth sighs tiredly, barely able to contain her eagerness for night to come. She wishes with fierce desperation to curl up in her bunk and fall asleep, to welcome the sweet dreams that always come to her when the rocking of the vessel is there to calm her. The day has been long and grueling, and though she enjoys the freedom of the sea, she has grown to loathe it too. It takes so much work to move the beast they sail on everyday.

Distractedly, she runs a hand over her face before trudging a path through her hair, only to give a soft cry of pain. Lightly pulling out her fingers, she feels around her head and discovers a large knot, one that a person could not merely just claw out with their digits. Lightly running her hands through her mane once more, she discovers knots everywhere, both small and large, scattered throughout her hair.

In complete vain, she tries to rake out the blasted gnarls, however her endeavor is all for naught.

"My tremendous intuitive sense of the female creature informs me that you are _troubled._"

The voice startles her, but she does not show it when she spins about to discover the captain's shadowy eyes staring at her, his lips curled upwards into a knowing and amused smirk. She frowns, regards him for but a moment and then turns back around.

"You have begun to loose your creativity in greeting people, Jack," Elizabeth says in an uninterested tone, rather irritated by the urge she feels to smile.

Jack's body pulls in beside hers, his eyes focused on the sea that lies before them.

"I believe my greeting fits appropriately," he tells her with a look of a thoughtful child. "My usage of it is not due to lack of creativity albeit, but lack of will to come up with a new greeting. Though the greeting I just greeted you with is clearly a valid greeting for both now and the original moment I first used said greeting, would you not agree?" A flash of gold is visible when he grins at her, clearly proud of his defending claim.

Elizabeth holds back a very keen urge to toss her eyes towards the heavens and instead casts him an annoyed look.

"What do you want?"

He shrugs and turns to look at her. "I merely saw that you were having a rather bothersome time with that" -he eyes her hair and gestures to it with a grim look- "nest you've got accumulating there."

Her fingers automatically reach for a strand – does it really appear to be as bad as he says?

"Yes, well, there is nothing to be done about it," she tells Jack, attempting to run her hand through it and obviously finding it difficult.

Reaching out boldly, he takes a lock of hair and fingers a tangled little mass in it, taking the young woman aback slightly, hearing her breath stumble.

"We could lop it all off," he suggests teasingly, his eyes trained on the hair which he begins curling about his finger.

Elizabeth half-heartedly swats his hand away, a slight smile reaching her face. "I'd rather not." Feeling a little defensive, she adds, "And it only causes a problem for me on the gustiest of days."

Jack freezes, and then places his hands on his hips, addressing her with the uttermost feign haughtiness. "Miss Swann," -he has never called her Mrs. Turner, despite her protests to her former surname- "if that tangled mass of what you _claim _to be hair is causing a lack of proficiency upon my vessel, then I order as captain for you to do something with it." His upper lip curls slightly in disgust and he looks at her head once more.

"I haven't anything to do with it, Captain," Elizabeth tells him, beginning to get upset. The nerve of him! He makes her out to be a beast!

He grins. "Ah, but fortunately for you love, I do."

He stalks around her, places a hand lightly on her shoulder, then turns her around, steering her towards his cabin. She trusts him entirely, but she cannot control that sense of anxiety that steals over her whenever he touches her in any way. However, she tries to shy away from the nervousness and instead asks stiffly when she is standing in the center of his quarters, "And what are you possibly going to do to help me?"

Jack throws her a lopsided grin and disappears behind a crimson curtain, a place she soon realizes is his bed chamber. Blushing furiously, she turns around and pretends to analyze the room – it is large with wide glass-paned windows near the end of the room. A tall globe stands near the capstan and a long mahogany table takes up the center of the room. Bookshelves are scattered across walls, as well as various décor and items from the pirate's travels and candles are strewn everywhere throughout the room, on table surfaces, shelves, candelabras, and even some are hanging from the ceiling, though none are lit.

Hearing him shuffle about behind the curtain, she strides over to a shelf and lifts the lid of a small wooden box, revealing a short, black pen, and a small inkwell with papers beneath it. Finding it to be anything but interesting, she turns to find captain staring at her, fascinated.

"Nothing but trifles in here love, though I can assure you that there are items far more appealing are just beyond there," he tells her, nodding a head towards his bed quarters.

A fleeting thought of something familiar flickers in her mind and lightly she steps forward, looking at him beneath a thick row of lashes and states, "And I am quite certain that there isn't."

Jack flashes a grin, interested that she is playing along. He leans forward challengingly.

"Would you like to see for your bonnie self?"

She feels a voice telling her in her mind that the idea is wrong, but she finds herself agreeing. "Yes I would, Captain."

Unknown to why she has said this, she suddenly is aware that she cannot back down now – he has proposed a challenge and she has accepted it.

Perhaps it is the risk of the game that entices her - the thrill and excitement of the moment, or the genuine curiosity she feels to see Jack's own personal space. Whatever it is, Elizabeth walks past the curtain when Jack holds it open for her and gives him a polite nod, though she feels his eyes digging into her back intensely.

A rich aroma immediately hits her as she steps into the adjoined cabin – it smells heavily of some fragrance she is not accustomed to, but it greets her nose in a lovely and heavenly manner. The headboard of a decently large bed sits up against a wall, a dark red quilt having been made to lie on top of it, joined by a row of pillows. A few drawers line the room, littered with more candles. Determinedly, she tells herself that there really isn't anything appealing in here, though her heart begins to beat fiercely against her breast. Facing Jack, she manages to give him a sweet smile.

"Why Captain Sparrow, I find there is evidence to the contrary – there is nothing that catches my eye in here either."

He cocks his head, an odd smile pulling at his lips. Breezing past her, he murmurs something she can not understand.

"I beg your pardon?"

Ignoring her once again, he pulls out an item she had not noticed before and waves it in front of her.

It is a hairbrush.

Elizabeth's eyes light up immediately and her hands fly out to grab the object, but Jack jerks it away from her.

"Ah, dear Lizzie. This," he says, pointing to her hair, "is no task to be tackle by your onesies, savvy? Allow me to help."

Her bottom jaw hangs open for a moment, shocked at his suggestion and both visually appalled and internally intrigued by it. She can't possibly allow him to do this, can she? He begins to smirk triumphantly at her silent indecision and that does it for her – pursing her lips, she nods.

"Very well." Her voice is stiff in attempt to keep the anxiety from it.

When he slips off his boots and begins to situate himself cross-legged in the center of his bed, Elizabeth cannot help but ask with a slight hint of panic, "In here?"

"Naturally – it's far more comfortable." As if to add emphasizes, he flourishes a hand over the mattress.

She is obviously unsure now, but the stubbornness inside her forces her to doff off her own suede boots and move towards the bed. For a moment, a flicker of uncertainty flashes in her eyes, and Jack sees it.

"Come on love – I swear on me life that I shall return you to the deck of the _Pearl_ with whatever honor you came here with… or are lacking there of."

Vexed, she glares down at him. "Don't be ridiculous. I am not worried of that – I trust you." Without another word, she sits in front of him, and pulls her hair to her back for him.

Jack slides closer to her until his crossed shins are touching her lower back, suddenly draining her of her former confidence. Elizabeth withholds a sigh when he begins parting her hair through the center, his fingertips grazing down from her neck till the middle of her back languidly.

Oh why did she have to forever get herself in these situations? Why does she have to feel this way around him, so comfortable, so fitting?

He slides off his rings and puts them into a little pile before reaching out and grabbing a small section of her hair. He can feel how tense and alert Elizabeth is; her back perfectly straight, her shoulders thrown back. Letting go of the tress and brush, he places his hands on her shoulders and whispers delicately into her ear, "You need to relax."

"I am relaxed," she lies, hiding the quiver in her voice by clamping her teeth together.

But it is his lip's brushing against her earlobe that does it and she begins to slouch forward limply. Satisfied, he slowly slides his palms off her shoulders and twiddles her hair around his finger for a while, and then resumes his task.

He works slowly, beginning at the bottom and working his way up, gently untangling each clump with slender, nimble fingers and the help of the brush. Jack chooses to work at his own pace, enjoying the way her hair feels between his hands, not to mention the proximity they are to one another, close enough that he can breath in the lovely aroma coming off her. It is a mix of jasmine, (something he is unsure where it came from), salt birthed by the spray of the ocean, sweat from hours of labor on deck, and something that is uniquely her own.

He winces when Elizabeth hisses in pain on occasion, the brush pulling on her sensitive, tanned scalp and he murmurs his apologies for hurting her. She takes each one sincerely.

However, soon all the tangled masses are gone and he just runs the brush through her hair aimlessly, thinking.

She finds her eyes beginning to close – how could she forget how nice it felt to have someone brush her hair? It soothed her, relaxed her. She recalls absently in the back of her mind of when the maids at her old home back in Port Royal use to brush her hair, how she'd sometimes fall asleep in their laps and wake up with her hair coiled in a braid. Of course it could not of stayed in, but Elizabeth had enjoyed it anyway.

Albeit, she was enjoying it more now, oddly… Though Jack's fingers are hard and callused from years of rough work on the sea, they are light and delicate with her as he begins to do something with her hair that is definitely not brushing it. Elizabeth is sure that she should not be allowing him to do this, to be so close and doing something that seems so intimate, but any will to ask him to stop has melted away.

Exhaling a sigh of pleasure, she says, "You're going to be the death of me Jack."

"Why is that love?" He sounds distracted, making her wish she could look at him.

"Because I just can't get my head around you," she admits.

Jack snorts, his fingers still working. "M'not an open book darling."

"Sometimes I wish you were."

"Care to explain?"

Beginning to feel foolish for even bringing it up, she starts to shake her head, but his hands are quick to grab her temples and stop her.

"Don't move 'Lizabeth or else you'll mess it up, savvy?"

Glad for the change in conversation, Elizabeth says threateningly, "Jack, I swear, if your doing something foolish to my hair, I'll -."

"Yes, yes, I know, you'll do something quite horrendous that scorned woman are usually prone to doing to the poor, innocent men who have so shamelessly done them wrong. Though I am not sure if the extent of killing would be a plausible punishment for ruining your hair…"

Her throat begins to close, and she tenses once more.

"Jack…"

He chuckles, an odd yet melodious sound to reassure her that he is joking, but she is entirely stiff now, uncomfortable.

Leaning forward, he whispers into her ear in a firm but at the same time gentle tone, "Love, I forgave you for that long ago, now will you please relax? It's rather trying to work when you're stiffer then one of dear William's swords."

Finding some reassurance from his beginning statement (and some annoyance at the end), she wiggles her shoulder blades and exhales deeply, closing her eyes once more.

"Good." Jack pulls away from her ear, the heat of his torso leaving her back. "Now give me a few more moments love, I swear I am just about done."

They sit in silence as he returns to his work. Elizabeth listens, fascinated in the sound of his breathing, and how level it is. She believes she is almost asleep, lulled by his breath, when he stops completely and tells her that he is done.

Her hands eagerly reach up into her hair and she runs her fingers through it – never before had it been so soft! She breaks out into a very large smile, repeatedly sifting her hands through it, feeling the smoothness with her palms and the absence of knots with her fingertips.

A word is about to escape her mouth when she feels something cool and smooth between her fingers.

"You might need this darling."

A shard of what was once an entire mirror appears in front of her face, and she takes it. Her eyebrows pinching together, she grabs the object in her hair and brings it forward, observing it closely.

It is an ivory bead in the shape of a swan.

"As I've always said love, Swann fits you far more then Turner."


End file.
